How to Easily Encourage Imaginative Play Using Felt

Here’s a one of my favorite ways to inspire imaginative play using felt.  It’s super easy to do and makes a great activity for toddlers and preschoolers!

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Sometimes the simplest things can really spark the imagination of a child. Adding these felt play pieces to toys you already have is a great way to encourage pretend play! And even if you don’t consider yourself crafty, this is seriously the easiest craft there is! (This post contains affiliate links.)

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Materials for Felt Play Pieces

Scissors: A nice pair of scissors (like these Fiskars ones I use) make cutting felt really easy.

Felt: There are different types of felt out there. My absolute favorite is 100% pure wool felt, but it’s also more expensive than your regular craft felt. If money were no object, I’d buy the wool felt every time, but living off of one teacher’s salary in California requires us to be frugal. I buy the wool felt for special toys I make for the kids or toys I make as gifts (like these wool felt letters and this tooth fairy pillow). I use regular acrylic felt for everything else! (One of my favorite places to purchase wool felt is from Felt on the Fly!)

Toy Figures: Just grab some toy figures your child already enjoys playing with. We have lots of wooden Holztiger animals and  Osthehimer animals that we decided to use (which we are in love with)! You can buy them on Amazon or one of our favorite shops, The Wooden Wagon. Some other toy animal sets that would be fun to use are: these jungle animals, these farm animals, and the Plan Toys Farm Animal Set,

Making Your Felt Play Pieces

Take your felt and cut it into shapes to represent different parts of the environment. I used blue felt to make lakes, ponds, and rivers, green felt for fields and bushes, and brown felt for mud, dirt, or desert. That’s it!

Don’t throw away your scraps! I always save mine in a large baggie no matter how small. You can even use your tiny scraps for crafts like we did with our abstract Christmas ornaments!

Using the Felt Play Pieces to Encourage Imaginative Play 

After I was done cutting out the felt, I set up some of the felt play pieces next to the container we use to hold our wooden animals. I added some animals to the felt and left the scene there as a way to invite the kids to play!

It’s always fun to see how the kids use certain materials. Lucy played with the materials first. Her animals had all kinds of adventures!

My toddler, Theo, later decided to join in. He loved making the animals drink water and jump as he joined in the pretend play going on.

When the kids are done using the materials, they simply place both the felt and wooden animals back into the container. We leave the materials out where they can access it at any time!

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